Kindred
by ChaoticCommander
Summary: Gates are opened, thresholds are crossed, and Players go missing. After nearly a full year without Kaz and his home life falling apart, Tom's pretty sure his life is over. Yet endings have a strange way of bringing forth new beginnings. (An extensive AU and soft reboot of the series. T for mild language and adult themes)


Author's note: Hello, it's been a while! Hope you guys enjoy this AU I've built in my absence. You can find me as transcending-chaos over on Tumblr.

Beta read by: forestfairyunicorn, ravanaugh-runner, and irlmaxxor on Tumblr.

* * *

Chapter 1

* * *

"The way things are going, you might have to repeat senior year, Mr. Majors."

Tom stared at the desk distantly, eyes following the pattern of the fake wood grain and biting the inside of his cheek. He didn't want to be here, he didn't want this news. Yet life didn't give a damn about what he wanted anymore.

"Thomas, look at me," the man said prompted.

The boy flicked his eyes up to the counselor.

Mr. Gonzales was a friendly man, usually bright and full of energy. Yet here, now, and with him, Tom felt like they both were as emotionally and mentally spent as the other. The counselor's mouth was a disapproving line, and the sag of his broad shoulders was exceptionally bowed today.

"We both know you can do so much better than this, you were on the honor roll since middle school," the man brought a hand up to his face and rubbed his eyes.

Tom knew if he did the same he'd just start crying.

A few endless seconds ticked by with the dull click of the clock on the wall.

"You can still bring up your grades though," he went on. "Many of your classmates have volunteered to help tutor you after school an-"

"I have soccer practice everyday until six," Thomas countered quickly. No, there was no way he'd abandon his team and get stuck in a stuffy classroom for hours every day just so he could get a stupid piece of paper and walk alongside everyone in a hot gymnasium at the end on the year. He didn't care. They didn't care, not really, they were doing this out of pity. He didn't want that. He wasn't a charity case. Besides if they cared, why didn't they step in earlier? "I have the regional semi-finals to prepare for."

"No, you don't."

The boy went rigid. "What."

"The coach has agreed to suspend your membership on the team," the man said cautiously, like he was talking to a dangerous animal. "Until you've gotten your grades up to at least a C average in every class."

"It's usually C- to walk." Tom didn't recognize the bite in his words, but it felt good.

"And you usually have straight As," the man threw up his hands in exasperation.

The stagnant air in the counselor's office seemed to drop twenty degrees. Tom curled his fingers into fists, pushing his nails into the flesh of his palms. "You can't do this," he murmured. "Soccer is the only thing that keeps me going right now, you can't j-"

"It's not for me to decide," Mr. Gonzales gave him a sympathetic look. "And those who do decide these things have chosen for you." He paused, turned, plucked a tissue from the container beside his desk, and handed it to the boy across from him. "Here."

Tom blinked, he'd been crying but was unable to feel it. Something wet dropped from his chin with a soft 'pat' onto his shirt. He took the tissue with numb fingers, but didn't wipe his face.

"So," the man began. "How're things at home?"

"They're openly talking about divorce now," the rasp in his voice was thick, the words dragged out of his throat by his stubbornness. "They're trying to sort out the paperwork but it's…it's hard."

"I'm sorry," the man offered his condolences. Tom wished he could shove those words back down his windpipe. "How's everything else? How're you?"

"My best friend is dead, I'm failing out of school, and I just got kicked off of the soccer team," he snapped. Tom stood up, hauled his backpack from its spot on the floor and slung it over his shoulder. "How do you think?!"

"Thomas, I'm not your enemy," the resignation in the man's voice was thick. "We just want what's best for you."

Tom shook his head, "I don't feel like talking."

With that, he slipped out of the room and went back to class.

* * *

The rest of the school day was as much a blur as they'd been ever since the second week of September. He sat in the back of the class, no one spoke to him, no teacher called on him, and he stared out the window. No, he didn't have his homework, what was the point?

Occasionally another student would turn and toss him a look. It was probably meant to be sympathetic but all it did was agitate him further. He didn't want their stupid pity, everyone was only sorry _now_. Because it was _him_. Because he wasn't _Kaz._

Bells rung, he'd move through the crowded hallways and bodies, sit in his next chair in the back, and repeat until the final bell resounded. His teacher insisted he go up to the second floor for tutoring, so he nodded, left the room, then went out the back of the school. The soccer and baseball fields were nearby but luckily no one from the teams were outside yet. He ran along the cement path that lead out of the fields and towards the street, eventually ducking between the trees that lined the sidewalk. It was early May, but the trees were already growing their leaves, offering some cover from the view of the school.

 _'I'm running like a criminal when I should be on the field,'_ he was disgusted with himself as he began walking the long way home among the oaks and birches and occasional lamppost.

He'd walked this way every day since Kaz had gone missing, hoping he'd find him on one of the paths that branched off of the main road and into the woods. This road had little traffic, so the pair had always loved walking alongside each other and just talking. Tom usually spoke about music or soccer or whatever had been important to him way back then, but his friend only talked about Chaotic. Tom even started playing so that they could share in the hobby together, but he wasn't near as good or devoted to the game as his friend was. But some of the stories that the redhead told…

The tales were always so strange, so vivid, and he'd insisted that his friend would have a great future and an author if he ever decided to write what he spoke about down, but the other just laughed it off.

 _'Not my story to tell.'_

 _'Then why tell me?'_

 _'Because I want you to experience it too.'_

He'd never understood what that meant, or why Kaz kept talking about some damned cards like they were real, complaining that the art was never as accurate to life as it should have been, but he'd never get the chance to clarify it all. His friend had gone missing two weeks into the school year, and a month later, it'd been ruled a suicide. Tom'd gone to the funeral, buried an empty casket, and been broken ever since.

His footfalls were slow and rhythmic as he walked onwards toward his house, mind caught in between memories and a familiar sensation of drowning. He stared at his sneakers, the white on his shoes tarnished a dull brown and the once-silver details a neutral gray. _'How appropriate.'_ He felt exactly how they looked: colorless and withered.

He trekked onwards, looking over his shoulder when a car came by, a paranoid voice in his head saying they were going to drag him back to the school for tutoring. No one did. All the cars passed by, and the brunet made it to his house. He walked around to the back, unlocked the door, entered, and relocked it before heading up to his room.

Despite the mess of his life at school, his room was the one thing he kept absolutely clean. When things had really started getting bad, he'd purged a lot. Why keep it all if it didn't mean anything? Now, what was once comfortably cluttered was now sterile. The blue walls seemed colder than normal today, and after the talk he'd had with his counselor, Tom couldn't help but feel crestfallen at the sight of the few trophies he kept from the town's junior soccer league. He'd put them in a box later, right now, all he wanted to do was curl up in his sheets, play a few online Chaotic matches, then try to get in some sleep before his parents got home. Shouted arguments were a regular occurrence these days, and he never liked being home when they started up.

His Scanner and laptop were hidden under his mattress where he'd left them, a habit he'd started after overhearing his dad threaten to take them away out of fear they were what was causing his down spiral. _'Yeah, right,'_ he'd thought at the time. _'Like you putting a hole in the wall wasn't the cause.'_ The boy shook off the intrusive thought, situated himself on his bed, and opened up the game.

The familiar website opened, his home space nearly the same as how he'd left it. The mail icon on the screen had a small exclamation point next to it. "Mail?" Mail wasn't something that happened often in the game. Sure, Players had a chat function, but Tom wasn't really active on that front either; most of what he received were people upset he'd beaten them. As such, he normally just played a few rounds, logged off, and tried to go about the rest of his day. The little icon jumped, the motion catching him a bit off guard before he saw it again. It was just like how those on his dock would alert him to an update. He clicked on his inbox, where he had two messages: one from a moderator, and one from _KidChaor_.

His heart clenched. If someone was fucking with him, he was going to tear them apart.

He clicked on the mod's message first.

 _MajorTom,_

 _Congratulations on your battle record! As a reward for your efforts, we have included a redeemable code to be entered into your Scanner to receive a valuable gift!_

 _DGAFECB_

 _-The Chaotic Team_

"This is spam," he remarked dryly. It figures that someone probably hacked Kaz's old account and sent all the people on his friends list junk messages. Tom went back to the main inbox, ready to delete both of the messages when a new one appeared.

It was from _KidChaor_ again, this time it had a subject line that read "please just trust me on this". Against his better judgement, or some deluded sense of hope, he opened the message.

 _Okay I know messaging you out of the blue after like a year has gone by is a terrible shot because you're probably at soccer practice but please hear me out. I was told you were sent a Code, so please do as the instructions say and enter it. Please. Dude I know this is crazy, but I will be right there on the other side when you show up. Tom I swear this isn't spam or made up-_

He clicked out of the message. What had he been expecting? It was just some jerk using his friend's old account. Didn't stop it from hurting. But…

Tom glanced at his Scanner.

How had whomever had hacked the account known he should be at soccer practice? He and Kaz hadn't ever put anything personal on their account beyond the frivolous 'favorite Tribe/Creature' thing. Besides, he'd gotten more questions asking if he was a David Bowie fan than people asking what his name was, and even then he'd lied and said it was Charlie or Martin or whatever he'd felt like that day.

He picked up the blue device and turned it over in his hands, was he really going to do this?

He entered the Code.

"Here goes."

Two things happened when he hit the authorization button. The first is that he slumped over in his bed after a sharp jolt. The second was that he landed on his back, head ringing and vision swimming. Bright lights overhead eventually came into focus and he sat up.

This place looked straight out of a science fiction movie, yet there were people in modern clothes just walking around like it was completely normal. Arching ceilings and metallic surfaces all gleaming with colorized chrome finishes and patterns etched into the walls. It was like a Grand Central Station from some other bizarre world. Even stranger were a few figures who themselves looked like they belonged in a video game. Some were more beast-like than others, but most were colorful washes of alien features mixed with human forms. Horns, tails, or other fantastic other features dotted the crowd. It was curiously beautiful.

"This isn't real," Tom whispered to himself as he got to his feet, Scanner gripped tightly in his hand. He was hallucinating, he'd just hit his head. He was totally not here, not doing this, and he'd finally lost it.

"Yeah, that's what I thought too."

The boy wheeled at the familiar voice, coming face-to-face to a figure that was clearly everything and nothing like he remembered. The face shapes were the same, so was the stature, so was the crooked _"I told you so"_ grin. But the skin was wrong, a sunset mix of reds, oranges, and violet stripes. The hair was too long, more vivid that before, and his eyes glowed like embers. Even his clothing was similar: loose fitting garments of neutralized greens and beige, though a tabard was a far cry from his regular vest.

But nothing Tom's head was coming up with could adequately refute what he was seeing. Was he in shock? Maybe it was shock. Yeah, he was definitely in shock.

"So uh, turns out I'm not crazy." The strange doppelgänger shifted nervously, exactly like how Kaz had always done.

"And back from the dead," the brunet added.

The red being laughed in that light, scoffing manner that was too familiar to be faked. Next thing Tom knew, he was wrapped up in a tight hug. "I missed you so much."

For the second time that day, Tom cried. "Missed you too."


End file.
